Sweet Etiquette
by Night Monkey
Summary: Getting into the real spirit of Halloween might just save your life, because demons don't appreciate floss any more than the rest of us. Only they'll do worse than egg your house.


Halloween is my favorite holiday for fic writing, and I'm happy to present my _Supernatural_ contribution, which features everyone's two favorite white-eyed demons! Hooray! Considering the characters, don't be surprised if there's some violence. Not heaps and heaps, but some.

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"I was born on the night of Samhain, when the barrier between the worlds is whisper-thin..." - Carolyn MacCullough

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Hell was one of the most stable ecosystems. Very little truly changed there. Sure, a crop of fresh souls arrived daily, though those souls never varied much. All of them sinners, or people who had signed away their souls for the same sentimental crap. Nothing inspiring. Nothing new. The same sad stories, the same crimes, the same old song and dance.

Not that Alastair was complaining. He had the best job in the world. Well, in Hell, at least. Though there weren't really any jobs topside that he'd prefer. He was content. He had his racks, his knives, his bloody and torn victims, and his usual run of middle-of-the-road apprentices to kick around. He had pain to inflict, souls to fillet, and if Hell was in stasis, Alastair didn't mind being its sole source of creativity and ingenuity. There was always a new way to hurt the school teacher who fiddled his pupils or the CEO who rocked the world's economy with his corruption or the-

Alastair noticed his victim had stopped screaming. And it certainly wasn't because Alastair had taken his hand out of the victim's viscera. Nope, that hand was still tightly entwined with that liver. So what had stopped the beautiful music?

Alastair studied his victim's face. The damned soul's eyes were open, staring, though not directly at Alastair. It was looking over the demon's shoulder, at something behind him. Something that, somehow, managed to be more attention-grabbing than the completely unethical surgery Alastair was performing.

With a sigh and a disgusting moist sliding sound, Alastair removed his hand from his victim's belly and wiped the blood on the tattered remains of the soul's shirt. He turned around and found a sight as out of place in Hell as a snowball or a glass of ice-water would have been.

An angel. A beautiful little girl, dressed in pure white, with a pair of feathered wings sprouting from her back.

Well, that was something you didn't see every day.

"Oh, thank you God, thank you, I knew you wouldn't leave me down here, I prayed and prayed and oh thank you."

Alastair turned his head and looked at his victim. The chained soul was weeping, and not out of pain and fear. It honestly thought God had heard its simpering prayers and had sent down an emissary to raise it from perdition.

The demon shrugged. He could play along, and he bet the sweet little angel would, too. There was nothing quite so crushing as having hope dashed at the last moment, and in spectacular fashion. And if nothing else, at least after this the soul would stop moaning to God every time Alastair plied a razor to it.

"What happened, angel? Get blown off course? Take a wrong turn at Albuquerque? Or are you slumming it?" Alastair asked.

The angel smiled at him, revealing teeth as perfect and white as her dress. Not that Alastair expected a mouth full of braces or crooked chompers.

"Kill him, please, kill him, kill him!"

That soul was beginning to get annoying. Here Alastair was, trying to have some fun, and it was like a fly in his ear, pestering the hell out of him. It took a lot of restraint not to put a second ventilation hole in the soul's gut.

The angel peered at the soul and then nodded. She took a step towards Alastair, and extended her arm in front of her.

"Come on, celestial," Alastair taunted.

The angel began speaking a language the soul could not understand, but that it decided very quickly must be Latin, because that was what priests spoke to exorcise demons in all those horror movies. And just like in the movies, the words quickly began to affect the demon.

Alastair snarled and brought a hand to his throat. The angel, in that sweet, piping voice, continued her incantation. With utter confidence, the angel stepped forward, and Alastair faltered. The angel took another step and Alastair, caught somewhere between a savage growl and a retch, gave ground.

The soul decided to get in on the action, and began shouting "The power of Christ compels you!" It wasn't the first time Alastair had heard that line—regardless of religious affiliation, that seemed to be the one line everyone tried to use when they found themselves in Hell, surrounded by eager demons—but it made being serious very difficult just then.

The angel didn't react to the soul's less-than-helpful shouting; she kept advancing, never changing the tempo or inflection of her words. All the while, Alastair retreated, until, just in front of the rack and the soul chained to it, he went to his knees.

Kneeling was not his natural state, and it made him feel like a downed cow. Still, this would all be worth it any second now. So Alastair stayed put, his head bowed, and waited for the little angel to step just a little closer.

Finally she was in range. Just as she reached for him, Alastiar thrust out both hands and grabbed her wings. The angel shrieked as she was lifted off the ground.

"No! Alastair, _stop_! You're going to rip them!"

The soul had been prepared to scream with primal triumph. That scream died of mass confusion as the soul tried to figure out how the demon, who'd appeared to be on his last legs, had resurrected and wrangled the angel so easily. Or why the angel was now giggling as the demon released her wings and settled on holding her around the waist.

Finally, the soul had no choice but to ask, "What?"

The angel wiggled and the demon set her down. She clambered up the rack like a monkey and perched next to the soul's head. Once she was situated, she proceeded to slip off her wings as though they were a cardigan sweater.

"They came from China. Look, it says right on them," the angel said, pointing to a small tag hidden among the feathers.

The soul had spent a lot of time on Earth squinting, and dying hadn't improved its eyesight any. Though how in the hell had it mistaken a cheap child's costume piece for something heavenly? Were its eyes really that bad, or had is been so desperate for help it saw what it wanted to see, breathing life into the stiff plastic wings?

"This one's silly, Al," the angel chirped.

"They're all silly," Alastair replied.

The soul began to weep.

"I don't like it anymore. Let's go play somewhere else."

"Like where?" Alastair asked as the angel who most certainly wasn't an angel slid off the rack.

"Topside."

Alastair shook his head. "It's cold and I'm busy."

"But it's Halloween and I need someone to take me trick-or-treating."

Alastair pointed at the soul. "Take him."

"He's all boogers. Come on, I need an adult."

The got Alastair laughing. Yeah, Lilith really needed an adult. She was, despite her predilection for JonBenet meat-suits, the oldest demon. And absurdly powerful. There was not a deity strong enough to help anybody who tried to snatch her off the streets.

"Ali, I've got my costume ready and everything! Let's go before all the candy is gone!"

Alastair could have dragged it out, though only at the cost of being repeatedly referred to by Lilith's girly pet name. Ali, no thanks, he'd bear the cold for an hour rather than have some demon wander in and hear Lilith calling him _that_ while pawing at him.

"You win. As always. Don't you ever want to find out how the other side lives?" Alastair asked.

"No way, I like winning too much."

Before Alastair could respond, Lilith grabbed his hand and Hell dissolved before his eyes.

The red glow and ambient chorus of eternal screams was replaced with excited young voices, a dark, windy night sky, and the pervading wet odor of countless leaves mildewing in piles. Alastair wished he had a jacket. A coat. A fur-lined parka and gloves.

If the nippy air bothered Lilith, she didn't show it. Still joined hand-to-hand with her adopted daddy, Lilith skipped out of the side street they'd materialized in, and joined the swarming bunches of children that ran up and down the sidewalks.

"Does your meat-suit live around here?" Alastair asked.

"Nope. She lives about fifty miles away. She only knows this town 'cause one of her friends moved here, and she came to visit during the summer summer. So nobody's gonna recognize her," Lilith replied.

"What about that friend?"

Lilith shook her head. "We're not friends anymore. And her mommy and little brother are never gonna see her again."

Alastair tussled Lilith's hair. "That's my girl." Lilith returned his compliment with a giggle.

An unfamiliar girl and her equally unfamiliar father managed to attract attention, even with free candy and haunted houses to serve as a distraction. A group of superheroes—with a random Freddy Krueger thrown in since the Justice League now accepted applications from horror movie monsters—watched the pair of demons from across the street. Freddy took a step off the sidewalk, and was quickly grabbed by Superman and Batman. When Freddy looked questioningly at his friends, both kids shook their heads.

Whatever vibes the superheroes had picked up seemed to reach most of the other children. A little girl in a fairy costume approached Lilith, but decided she didn't want a new friend after all, and bolted back to hide behind her mother's leg. A gaggle of teenager girls dressed as sluttier versions of ordinary professions stopped prattling as Lilith and Alastair passed them. Even Frankenstein had a sudden, urgent need to run across the road as the pair approached.

Lilith paid absolutely no attention to the kids' desire to stay the hell away from her. She continued to skip along, and let go of Alastair's hand only long enough to reach into the bodice of her dress and remove a folded orange plastic bag. When she shook the bag out, it revealed a jack o' lantern face. She waved the empty bag at Alastair like a flag.

"We need to fill this with candy," Lilith said.

"Go knock on some meat-suits' doors," Alastair said.

"Thanks, Ali, but I know how Halloween works."

To prove she did, Lilith released her hold on Alastair's hand and scurried up the porch steps of the closest house. She rang the doorbell, and a little old lady appeared. After the perfunctory "what a cute little angel!" the granny dropped a candy bar into Lilith's bag.

While Lilith was off getting her first candy, Alastair flexed his freshly liberated hand. Lilith might have looked like she was in third grade, but her grip could make the meanest wrestler run away crying. As the pins and needles lanced his fingers, Alastair smiled. He liked pain. Inflicting immeasurable amounts of it on others was his favorite, but every now and then, having his fingers crushed by the demon who had created him was just the thing he needed to ward off the cold.

"Next house, next house!" Lilith sang. This time she didn't return to hold Alastair's hand, but instead ran to the neighboring house.

A family of trick-or-treaters occupied the doorway, and Lilith hung back until they were finished. As they walked by, a boy dressed as a ninja tugged Lilith's wings. Her initial impulse was to send him, his worthless parents, and his dog all straight to Hell in a blast of cleansing white light. That was her initial impulse to deal with most things that made her mad: going nuclear on them. But tonight was Halloween, and she wanted to play with the meat-suits, not burn them to the ground, not unless they _really_ made her mad.

Lilith received her candy (two lollipops and a small bag of candy corn they she already knew she was going to force Alastair to eat) and it was on to the next house.

While Lilith banged on doors and rang bells, Alastair followed like a good dog. He didn't quite manage to avoid interactions with parents as well as Lilith had with children, though for the most part, he was left alone. His longtime meat-suit wasn't something any of the recently divorced single mothers were interested in, and a few words in his raspy, hair-raising voice, and nobody cared about where he'd moved from. One particularly oblivious father tried engaging Alastair in a discussion about the Patriots. That ended only when Alastair turned his eyes milky white and named for the super-fan how many souls had been sold to get the Patriots those Super Bowl wins. The man swallowed thickly, snatched up his pirate son, and ran away.

Candy added up quickly, and before half an hour had elapsed, Lilith had foisted her pregnant bag on Alastair. She was more than happy to take it back when the next decorated house beckoned, but between stops, he was her drug mule.

At the next house, a crowd of teenage boys gathered on the porch like vultures around a rotting carcass. Other trick-or-treaters gave the boys dirty looks, but made no attempt to join them. Lilith, backed up by the knowledge she could erase the neighborhood if she wanted to, decided to see what was so fascinating about that porch.

The homeowners, for whatever reason, were unable to hand out candy themselves, and had instead set up a social experiment that confirmed Darwin's theory of survival of the fittest. A large bowl of candy accompanied by a handwritten note saying "please take ONE" was perched on a stool. Each of the boys had taken no less than twenty of the assorted small treats.

Lilith marched into the flock and said, "Share!"

The boys looked down at her and laughed. "Uh-oh, God's pissed off at us now! We better give this all back!"

"God's dead, and you're next if you don't share," Lilith replied.

"Holy shit, what? You are one intense midget."

Performing the same trick Alastair had with the Patriots fan, Lilith rolled her eyes to their full whiteness. The boys' laughter shriveled and died in their throats. With a flick of her finger, Lilith sent one of the boys crashing into the front door. The others forgot all about any binding ties, dropped their candy bags, and ran away screaming bloody murder.

The commotion drew Alastiar and he stepped onto the porch and inspected Lilith's work. She was busy emptying the boys' candy into her own bag. The boy she'd smashed against the door was moaning and sliding in and out of consciousness.

Alastair knelt down beside the injured boy and produced a straight razor from his pocket. The boy's eyes cleared and focused almost instantly.

"Can you read?" Alastair asked.

"Yeah," the boy said.

"Then what does this say?" Alastair grabbed the sign from the bowl and held it in front of the boy's eyes. "Take one. Look, they capitalized it _and_ underlined it. Can't get much clearer, can it? Not unless it was carved into your skin."

Before the boy could protest, Alastair pinned his hand to the floor and slashed his palm open. "One. Not two." He sliced the other hand. "One. Are we clear, or do I need to move on to the next paired body part?"

Alastair released the boy and he scrambled away on all fours. Partial bloody handprints marked his retreat.

"Thanks, Ali. That's a lesson he'll never forget," Lilith said.

"And if he does forget, shouldn't be too hard to find him with those scars."

The pilfered candy all but filled Lilith's bag and there were only a few houses left on the street. It was almost time to call it a night, but not quite. Lilith hurried to the next door, and rang the doorbell.

It was answered by a man dressed as a dentist. He dropped two items into Lilith's bag: floss, and a toothbrush. He then looked down into the bulging bag and said, "You're really gonna need those unless you want cavities."

He then closed the door in Lilith's horror-struck face.

Seeing the first demon in creation rendered speechless and left out in the cold by a lowly meat-suit left Alastair downright impressed. Of course, if the dentist had known he'd just ruined a demon's Halloween, he'd piss himself, but in his ignorance, he'd done someone no other human ever had, as far as Alastair knew.

Lilith suddenly whirled around, her eyes white and blazing like the hearts of neutron stars. "Alastair, he gave me floss!"

"That's just blasphemous," Alastair replied.

"And a toothbrush!"

"It's practically holy water."

"This isn't funny!" Lilith shrieked.

"Of course not! Anyone who gives toothbrushes to children on Halloween could take my job one day. I don't intend to be demoted to stoking the fires for the hot pokers," Alastair said.

"Then let's teach him a lesson about the spirit of Halloween."

"The Great Pumpkin?"

"Ali, you need better pop culture."

Before Alastair could defend his tastes, Lilith kicked in the door. A child her size should never have been able to do such a thing, no matter how much PCP she ingested, but one good swing and the doorway was standing vulnerable and open.

Alastair followed just behind her, and mule-kicked the door closed. It was unlikely any native trick-or-treaters would want to visit the friendly neighborhood tooth driller, but being interrupted in the middle of their work would piss both demons off. For good measure, Alastair locked the door and turned off the porch light.

The dentist, like most people, upon hearing his front door kicked in, had run for the opposite end of the house. Not that he got very far. Lilith flung him to the ground with a telepathic hold, and crushed him there like a beetle beneath a boot. The dentist, hardly able to breathe, squirmed like a bug on the verge of its carapace's implosion.

"Oh my God, what?" the dentist gasped. Each word required a separate breath, and every word cost him as Lilith forced him harder and harder against the floor.

"If he suffocates, that's not going to be much fun," Alastair pointed out.

Lilith released her hold just enough for the dentist to get a full breath. He used that breath to scream long and scream loud. Any other night, it might have reached his neighbors and attracted concern. But this was Halloween, and everyone was screaming. Several decorated houses even used recorded screams to set the ambiance. One more shriek in the night wasn't going to bring the police running.

To shut him up, Lilith sat on his back. The dentist, again barely capable of drawing breath, was reduced to whimpering and panting.

"What are you?" the dentist managed to get out. "How're you doing this?"

Lilith grabbed a handful of his hair and jerked his head around so they could see each other face-to-face. The pain in his neck coupled with the immense fear of having his house invaded by monsters brought tears to the dentist's eyes.

"I'm Lilith, and this is Alastair. We're demons from Hell, and you've just ruined our Halloween," Lilith said.

"I'm sorry! Really, I am, please believe me!"

"We do believe you," Alastair said. "When humans get in this state, they're pretty much beyond lying. We just don't care. Sorry doesn't work with us. We need a little more."

"Like what?" the dentist asked, his voice quivering.

"Like every tooth pulled out with pliers. For a start."

The dentist broke into harsh sobs.

"And maybe we can have some real fun with all these toothbrushes. I had a guy on my rack who'd been stabbed to death in prison by a toothbrush shank. Let's see how creative I can get."

While Lilith restrained the dentist, Alastair picked up a few of the toothbrushes the man had dropped when he'd run for his life. He carried them into the kitchen, set them on the table, and raided the cutlery drawer for something with a keen edge. Once he had a whittling knife, Alastair sat down and began to carve the plastic brushes into fearsome instruments of pain. Like most other dental tools, in other words.

Alastiar returned a few minutes later with a variety of points, cutting edges, and, in one case, a corrosive chemical weapon, all made from toothbrushes (and the chemicals he found under the sink). Lilith was smiling and playing with the dentist's face. No, Alastair noted, not just playing with it. She was force-feeding him candy.

And she'd gotten a start on knocking out his teeth.

Lilith looked up and noticed Alastair, and his brand new toys, had just entered the room. She held her bag of candy up to him. He selected a jawbreaker and popped it into his mouth.

"See?" Lilith asked, bending back the dentist's head at such an extreme angle it must have felt like his spine was about to crack. "Eating candy isn't dangerous for your teeth. Ali's still got all his teeth. Giving out toothbrushes is way, way more dangerous.

The dentist, his mouth full of blood and chocolate, could only gag and drool the aforementioned substances all over the floor.

Alastair handed Lilith one of his homemade toothbrush shanks. It was one he'd whittled to a vicious point. She gratefully accepted, and in no time flat, she was reenacting scenes from _Marathon Man_. Alastair dragged a chair from the kitchen and sat down to watch. He might have been Picasso with a Razor, but that didn't mean Lilith couldn't paint a pretty picture too.

"This wasn't such a bad Halloween after all, was it?" Alastair asked.

"Thanks for taking me out, daddy," Lilith replied.

"I'm never doing it again, so make this last."

"All night," Lilith said. She traded the spiked toothbrush for one with a serrated edge carved into its handle.

This was a much better treat than candy anyway.

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The End

Thanks for reading.


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